GOP's problems exposed in Senate

In 2010, it was Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado who snagged away nominations from the establishment preference to disastrous results.

Those weren’t the only embarrassments. The national party lined up behind moderate Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, angering tea party activists who loved Marco Rubio. Crist lost and eventually left the party. And when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell hand-picked Trey Grayson against tea party favorite Rand Paul, even Grayson was thumped in a primary stunner.

Spooked by the Crist and Paul experience — along with the other primary endorsement problems in 2010 — GOP leaders in Washington opted for a more passive approach in 2012.

Though party leaders still got most of the candidates they wanted, they also wound up with Todd Akin in Missouri. His “legitimate rape” comments hang like a cloud over the Republican hopes of winning a seat what was thought to be a shoo-in for the party.

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, goes the thinking.

It’s a confounding predicament for party leaders, whose most well-laid plans are susceptible to forces beyond their control.

Sue Lowden, an establishment-backed candidate who was defeated in the 2010 Nevada GOP Senate primary, seemed to wrestle with what approach the GOP should take.

“I think the senatorial committee should come out early if they have someone they like,” she said before pausing briefly. “But the people in those states sometimes resent that. There’s hostility toward the federal government and a group back in Washington telling Missouri, Nevada or wherever about picking a candidate. It’s not as volatile on the Democratic side.”

The retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) suggested in an interview that party leaders hadn’t yet heeded the lessons of 2010.

“You know what they ought to be worrying about: why we didn’t win a lot of races last time,” said Snowe. “We have to elect candidates who are going to win. And we have to nominate candidates in primaries” who will win.

HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE

But getting the right candidates in every race is much easier said than done, say the tacticians in the trenches.

Bensing acknowledged their counterparts on the Democratic side are much more effective ruling their base with an iron fist.

“Their brokers back in the state are more pliable than we are,” he said. “Republicans at the grass-roots level back in the states are not as compliant to GOP wishes coming out of Washington. We may be able to win more seats if we were.”

Even in instances where the NRSC’s preferred candidate emerges — like Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin — they are often hobbled by the rough-and-tumble primary process. Thompson limped out of the primary out of money and had to spend weeks off the airwaves as Rep. Tammy Baldwin pummeled him and vaulted ahead in polls, which now show the race essentially deadlocked.

And if they would’ve propped up Thompson and tried to clear the primary?

“There’d be a backlash,” said Bensing. “You’d have local Republican groups saying, ‘Get out of the way. We don’t want you here telling us what to do.’”

In Missouri, meanwhile, the hand-wringing continues over the primary that produced Akin, whose nomination threw a lifeline to vulnerable first-term Sen. Claire McCaskill.